In November, Microsoft announced a six-month extension for Windows 10 Enterprise version 1511 and Windows 10 Education version 1511, establishing a new "additional servicing" deadline of April 10, 2018, from October 10, 2017. On.

"Microsoft definitely wants people to subscribe, and that's the future of how they want people to consume Windows", Mangan said.

According to Statcounter, Windows 10 ran on 42.78 per cent of Windows computers in January 2018 - versus 41.86 per cent for Windows 7.

Microsoft's built-in antivirus software for Windows 10, Windows Defender, is getting an important new feature next month. "Windows 10 was launched at the end of July 2015 and Microsoft will be pleased to have put its Windows 8 experience behind it".

The suite consists of the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Skype for Business apps, and comes with a ton of improvements which include the likes of new charts for Excel and fresh animations for PowerPoint, better inking features and tighter security.

Office 2019 will get the usual period of standard support, but just two years of extended support.

Microsoft will keep developing the tools until they're passing the company's quality checks after which they will release the final version of Office 2019. Office 2019 client apps will be released with Click-to-Run installation technology only, but Microsoft will not be offering MSI deployment for Office 2019 clients, only doing so for Office Server products.

Support for Office 2019 will also be shorter than usual.

The other oft-quoted analytics firm, NetMarketShare, reports Windows 7 with an eight percent lead over Windows 10, though the gap has closed from 20 percent a year ago.